Good morning. At my appearance here on February 13, I spoke about the findings of the Auditor General's report and the procurement ombud and how they're informing the actions I had taken to improve procurement processes and financial controls at the Canada Border Services Agency.
As I mentioned, I set up teams to overhaul and strengthen financial controls and project oversight. A new governance system is in place to oversee the approval of all contracts over $40,000.
We've reduced our consulting footprint. At the start of the fiscal year, we had 25 fewer consultants than at the same time last year, and today we have 68 fewer consultants working at the CBSA in the IT branches than we did when I was here in February. We're undertaking this reduction carefully and with purpose, making sure that we transfer knowledge and skills to our internal teams as we go.
However, we must continue to rely on outside expertise. In addition to the CBSA processes to validate the skills of contract resources, individuals working under contract with the agency must also certify their qualifications and experience to support the ongoing assessment of value for taxpayer dollars.
We will also be requiring vendors with active IT service contracts to certify that none of the resources they provide to CBSA are actively employed as public servants who have not disclosed this information. Should it be discovered that this is not the case after they have certified, we will terminate the resource and likely the contract. All CBSA employees will have to validate their conflict-of-interest declarations and will renew these declarations on a recurring basis. In addition, all employees involved in procurement will be required to certify that they do not have conflicts of interest, real, apparent or perceived, relating to individual procurements, at the outset of each process.
The fact remains that we cannot have documentation for all scenarios. That's why I say, trust but verify.
I want to be clear: My working assumption is that, as public servants, we comply with the rules of our workplace. That's why our code of conduct is so important.
On May 6, the CBSA published a refreshed code of conduct for employees at the CBSA. It's been updated to reflect current scenarios with more inclusive language, so that all employees can see themselves in the code. What hasn't changed are the fundamentals of the code: respect, integrity, stewardship and the pursuit of excellence. What also continues to guide us is the important mandate the CBSA has to serve and protect Canadians and the professionalism and dedication with which CBSA employees deliver on this mandate every day across the country and around the world.
Merci.